First Love
by LobsangLudd
Summary: Daryl had never been much good with women, but Twila had a way of putting him at ease. When he held her stock in his hands the rest of the world just seemed to fall away. DARYLXCROSSBOW One shot


Daryl had never been much good with women, but Twila had a way of putting him at ease. When he held her stock in his hands the rest of the world just seemed to fall away. DARYLXCROSSBOW

This came to me during a conversation with Doctorkaitlyn

AN: ACK! All my Walking Dead stuff ends up so melancholy! This was supposed to be a little crack-y, but it is not at all. Maybe because this is my first Daryl POV and he strikes me as having a very dry sense of humor. I still like how this turned out, let me know what you think!

First Love

It wasn't really Daryl's turn to be on watch, but Glenn and the women always seemed to feel a little more at ease when he was the one with his ass in the rickety lawn chair atop the RV. He wasn't sure if this was because they thought he was the most likely to spot trouble and able to deal with it, or if it was just because they preferred that he not be inside the RV with them. Either way, he didn't mind sitting up their when he couldn't sleep. He'd rather be out in the open air with a clear view of any danger than cooped up in that tin can surrounded by nerves and tension you could cut with a dull ax any day.

It was a gorgeous night tonight. The moon was just the tiniest sliver in the sky, but there were so many stars that Daryl didn't have any trouble seeing. He pulled Twila out of her custom made back holster and began the lengthy and pleasurable process of giving her a thorough cleaning.

When Merle asked him what he wanted for his birthday, Daryl had begged for a shotgun to replace the .22 hunting rifle he'd been using since he was six. Merle had laughed, but Daryl pressed. Surely as a ten year old he needed to have a man's weapon.

When his birthday came and Merle handed him an unwrapped crossbow, Daryl was furious. It was lightweight and colorful, it looked like a toy. Felt like a toy. Daryl thought Merle was mocking him. He threw the crossbow on the floor. Merle had tanned his hide for that.

"You gotta respect yer weapon boy. You treat her proper and she'll be your best ally, abuse 'er, and yer gonna hurt you're self, or someone else."

Daryl knew he was right, you always have to respect your weapon, and unlike Merle, who could be stubborn as hell, he was a fairly easygoing child, willing to admit fault if he deserved it. The next morning he was waiting when Merle came down for breakfast, the crossbow held carefully in his lap as he ran his fingers over her, learning about her. Merle tousled his hair and told him to get in the truck.

They spent the entire day in the west field practicing. Years later, after the world went to shit and a good day was one where no one he knew died, he would look back on that crisp November day with perfect clarity as one of the best in his life.

The crossbow wasn't a gun. It really wasn't anything like a gun. He had to cock it before every shot, and the string hurt his fingers. It was slow, and he had to stop every four shots to go collect his arrows.

But Merle ran out of shells after only a few hours. The shotgun was so loud it hurt his ears while his crossbow just made a soft _thup_ sound. Worst of all, when Merle handed him the shotgun during mid-morning, not only had his aim been way off using the heavier weapon, but the recoil of the damn think had knocked him on his ass. Merle had laughed so damn hard he nearly fell over himself.

By the time the sun sank down beneath the tops of the trees, Daryl had decided that the crossbow wasn't _so _bad. He still hated the colorful feathers on the arrows for being too girly, but that was really his only real complaint. The next morning Merle took him on his first real big game hunting trip. He brought down a boar bigger than he was and stopped his bitching completely.

Merle had let him dress it himself, but try as he might, Daryl did a piss-poor job. He lost more than half the meat to spoilage, and when he had tried to clean the hide he had instead left it a completely worthless ragged mess with bits of flesh clinging to it. Merle had laughed when he saw the fruits of Daryl's hours of hot sweaty labor, then he had bored a hole in one of the tusks and attached it to a slim strip of leather he managed to salvage from the hide. Daryl wore it proudly that night when Merle took him to the little diner in town. Daryl loved that diner. Twila, the only waitress, always came over to talk to him and bring him free pie even though it often meant she had to put up with mean words from Pa and smack away his hands when he tried to cop a feel. She lit up when she saw Daryl walk in with his big brother instead of his old man, and when she brought them shoo fly pie and tall glasses of milk she pulled a seat up to the cracked Formica table and spent an hour oohing and ahhing over Daryl's animated story telling while Merle sat silently smirking and drinking his coffee. When Merle reluctantly told him they had to be getting back, Daryl had taken off his trophy necklace and handed it to her, telling her that he was naming his crossbow after her because it had lots of pretty feathers. Twila had cried and hugged him so hard that his feet had left the floor as Merle snickered behind her back. When they got home Pa was already passed out on the sofa, so Merle gave him a glass of water and sent him to bed, and Daryl had fallen asleep with a smile on his face.

Two weeks later Merle had to go back to juvie, but this time it wasn't because he beat up the assholes who were harassing his girlfriend. This time it was for possession with intent to sell. After that things always seemed to get worse and never better.

Daryl ran his fingers carefully over the Dacron bowstring, checking for fraying and nicks. He was thankful that he didn't find any, he was running out of spares, and they weren't anywhere near a town big enough to have a hunting supply store.

Daryl wondered absently if Twila had made it out before the geeks got her, as he ran a thumbnail through a grime caked groove on her namesake. First thing he'd done, after hauling Merle's wasted ass out to the pickup and grabbing his crossbow and all the strings and arrows he could find, was drive out to the diner to get her. But the diner had been deserted, the windows all broken. Sal the fry cook had been stumbling about, his formerly massive girth mostly eaten away so that Daryl could see right in to his ribcage, his heart still and silent even as he staggered toward where Daryl stood, crossbow cocked and steady against his shoulder. Daryl hadn't prayed much since his Ma died and Pa stopped taking him to church, but he said a little prayer then, that the real Sal was at peace wherever he was. Then he let the arrow fly. He almost didn't go to retrieve it, but he only had sixteen to begin with and he was going to need every single one. He'd had to turn away and throw up after he pulled the arrow out of Sal's forehead. He tried not to think about what the grey gunk on it was as he swiftly wiped it clean on the tattered remains of the big man's apron.

Twila the crossbow hadn't been more than six inches away from him since then. They had done that horrible thing together, and now he felt closer to his weapon than he ever had. He talked to her sometimes, told her about things he had observed about his fellow survivors but didn't think it was his place to mention, stroked her like a cat late at night when he was having trouble sleeping. Last night, Glenn had managed to tempt him into a completely ridiculous conversation about whether or not the Atlanta Falcons had a prayer of getting into the Superbowl this year since surely all the other teams were dead. He had forgotten, for a little while, about the need for Twila, still close at hand leaning against his bent knee, as the others had joined in with more and more ridiculous scenarios of what would keep the Falcons from being the champions even if they were the only team in the league. Pretty soon hours had gone by and he hadn't thought of his crossbow even once. That night, hand clasped around the stock as he lay in the narrow aisle of the RV trying to sleep, he got the sudden irrational feeling that she was jealous. Mad at him. Daryl wondered sometimes if he was going crazy, talking to weapon like she was a person, worried about getting her mad. At least she hadn't started talking back yet.

And it wouldn't do if she was jealous. The last thing he needed was some female passive aggression in the form of breaking strings and jamming triggers. So tonight he apologized as he rubbed her gently with a soft cloth. He might make friends amongst these fellow refugees. He might have a lover someday, and a family. But his weapon would always be his first love.


End file.
